> Is there a real use case for binary RPMs not maintained by the > distribution release engineering teams? What's wrong with the Postfix > source, which is typically less likely to have ill-advised patches > dropped into it?
Because those of us who run package-based systems find things work better when we have Postfix in a package as well. This is rarely a problem for me on CentOS/RHEL systems, because I get Simon's source, set the options I want, and compile my own. Simon does a great job of keeping his source RPMs as close to vanilla as possible, and I don't really need the latest version on most of my systems. Red Hat, on the other hand, has been known to "patch" Postfix to the point of frustrating admins. In addition, they are, as someone already pointed out, several revisions back. Looks like Fedora 11 is currently at 2.5, though. --Brian